A Journey (112 page)

Now I am fascinated by science and by its possibilities; in awe of how its progress is changing our world and the lives we lead.

The purpose of the speech was threefold: to explain why science was important; why we had doubled investment in it under the very able guidance of David Sainsbury; and why we should not let its critics undermine its ability to break new ground. I had been having a ferocious argument with critics of GM food, led as ever by the baleful siren of the
Daily Mail
, who invented all sorts of nonsense to suggest it was a health hazard.

I had also battled with the same people over Leo and whether he had had the MMR vaccine. There was an attempt by a Dr Wakefield – later discredited – to suggest it was linked with autism. The
Mail
took it up. The issue was then framed as to whether Leo had had it – if the government is saying it’s safe, has the prime minister’s son had it?

It was not actually an unreasonable question and it would have been better frankly if we had just answered it upfront at the outset. But for private reasons the family was sensitive about issues to do with Leo, and so we argued on the ground of saying: the issue of Leo’s vaccination is not for the public domain. However, very soon, we realised we couldn’t sustain it. We then said, off the record, Look, we believe vaccination is best for children, including Leo, and we wouldn’t ask others to do what we would not do for Leo so draw your own conclusions; and of course that was an effective admission. So the journalists knew perfectly well that Leo had been vaccinated. But part of the media contrived to write that it was unclear and so public concern continued.

The speech set out a strong defence of science and drew the distinction between the right of science to tell us the facts, and the right to decide to act on them or not. What should not happen in the public debate is that, for reasons of prejudice or because we wish the facts were different, anti-science or bogus science suppresses the truth. From Galileo through Darwin to the modern day, that has always been the consequence of such an attitude; and today a nation like Britain cannot afford to be governed by it.

The next speech was on ‘multiculturalism’. Again it was an attempt to move policy on from a sterile debate about whether diversity is a strength or weakness. To me, it was clearly a strength. But, with citizenship should come certain clear duties as well as rights. This was a common space, which all British citizens should inhabit together. This space included support for basic British values, for our language, culture and way of life. In that regard, we should not be diverse; but unified. Outside of that space, diversity should be free to roam; and then it was indeed a strength.

I gave another speech on defence which set out my basic philosophy; but also made one very practical point. We need a new deal for the armed forces today. We are asking them to go back into combat and sustain casualties. For almost fifty years, the Falklands and Northern Ireland duties apart, that wasn’t the case. So we need to equip and reward them properly. However, if we fail to participate in the battles ahead, usually with our American allies, then we will lose the armed forces as a significant part of what gives Britain influence, reach and power.

The seventh speech was about the workplace. Rereading it, it strikes me as a little intellectually incoherent but it had one germ of an idea. Essentially, I was trying to articulate that the modern workplace is today all about utilising human capital and developing it. In this regard a ‘management/workers’ mentality was completely out of date. So rather than concentrating on a zero-sum game with management or capital, government and unions should be demanding the ability for their creativity and skill to be used to maximum effect; and should be active participants in the concept as well as the delivery of wealth creation. Hence government policy should be oriented towards lifetime upgrading of skills, not to labour market regulation.

The subject of the final speech was irresistible after ten years of being prime minister: the media! Naturally I knew they would dismiss it, caricature it and generally ridicule it. In one sense I was worst placed to speak about it. No one has sympathy for politicians and the media, and politicians (and me especially) have to spend much time cultivating the media. So the charges of being self-serving, hypocritical and disingenuous are easy to make. I was still determined to make the speech, because, in another sense, only someone with that experience of dealing with them, and with the position and office of prime minister, can dare articulate the criticism.

I wrote it having got up at 4.30 a.m. and just set it down in one draft. I confess as I read it later, live on TV, before an audience of journalists, I somewhat quailed. It was written as felt; and the feeling was strong.

However, the argument was right: the fact that the media now works by impact, which leads to sensation, crowds out a sensible debate about policy or ideas. What’s more, the media is 24/7, incredibly powerful and yet without any proper accountability. When they decide to go for someone, they are, as I said, like ‘feral beasts’. But more than that, they are also, partly through the presence of competition, highly partisan in order either to get maximum impact or to put across the views of their proprietors or editors.

Anyway, you can imagine how it went down! Though even today, people both at home and abroad mention the speech to me. Despite the best efforts to distort or discard it, it had cut through.

The last weeks were dominated by the Scottish elections and then the final preparations for leaving. I had now pencilled in the date of 27 June, after the G8 and European Council summits. During that time we hoped to bring the Northern Ireland peace process to final fruition and restore the power-sharing executive, and I was working flat out on that.

We had an interesting contretemps with Iran when they arrested fifteen Royal Navy personnel on 23 March. The Iranians said they were trespassing in Iranian waters, which we were sure was wrong, but it created some anxious days. Though I was outraged by the Iranian action, I played it very cool. The only thing that mattered was getting them back, and soon, so we went the diplomatic rather than confrontational route, despite criticisms for doing so. Unfortunately, some of the personnel were paraded on camera looking as if they were being overly friendly to their captors; and when they were released twelve days later – a ‘gift’ to Britain, as President Ahmadinejad called it – some gave accounts to the papers. This caused much synthetic fury, especially among those papers who hadn’t got the story. I just felt sorry for all of them. They were in a totally unexpected situation with little or no experience in dealing with anything like that, so I was inclined to overlook any lapse of judgement. But it occupied the nation’s mind for days.

We put forward proposals for reforming the House of Lords. Gordon was signalling he wanted an elected house. Jack Straw had become an advocate for partial election and proposed options. I went along with his recommendation, but personally, as I cheerfully told the Liaison Committee at my last appearance before them in June, I thought it mad. There’s a huge head of steam behind it now, though I still somehow doubt it will actually happen.

The House of Lords is a funny old place, a uniquely British institution. Though I’m naturally attracted by iconoclasm, in this instance I think the uniqueness is worth preserving. Hereditary peers are a nonsense and really can’t be justified, but the argument between electing and appointing members is far more balanced than the proponents of election ever allow. The danger with appointment is cronyism, placemenship, patronage and so on, but that can be countered by a different system of nomination, as indeed the House of Lords Commission introduced in May 2000 now ensures.

The danger with election is that you end up with a replica of the House of Commons, the only difference being that you elect those who for one reason or another can’t get into – or don’t want to get into – the Lower House. The whole benefit of the existing House of Lords is that you are able to put in people who have not spent life as a full-time politico, who aren’t replicas or ersatz versions of MPs, but who have a different and deeper experience or expertise. For example, to have had someone like Ara Darzi as a lord and a health minister – someone who is a surgeon and knows all about the new frontiers of medical care – is a huge bonus for the political talent pool. Indeed, the ministers in the Lords often turn out to be among the most able, but I doubt many, if any, would want to put in the political apprenticeship necessary to stand for election and become an MP.

Also, it depends on the function you want the House of Lords to perform. If it is a revising chamber, even better to have a different type of member in it. If you want a competing chamber, then I accept that the case for an elected house is stronger. But look around the world at the examples of such bicameral competitiveness, and there aren’t many working well; or, at least, not many that don’t lead to significant gridlock. So all in all I was against it.

The election campaign for the Scottish Parliament got under way in April. We had won twice before, but this time would be much harder. We were also coming up to the ten-year anniversary of the government. This was a huge achievement for the party, the first time it had ever got near such a milestone and I thought there was a real chance to focus on some of the successes of that decade.

The truth is, whatever anyone might say, and whatever has happened subsequently, between 1997 and 2007, Britain had ten years of uninterrupted economic growth. (I deal later with the causes of the 2008 crisis.) The living standards of the poorest 20 per cent improved significantly compared with the Tory years. Pensioners stopped dying for lack of heating every winter. The NHS was taken out of the news as a crisis case, and waiting lists and times improved, in some cases by leaps and bounds (where was it as an issue in the 2010 election?). In 1997, there were nearly a hundred London schools with fewer than a quarter of pupils getting five good GCSEs. By 2007, it was way down to two. The academy programme was now roaring ahead. It was the only government since the war under which crime had fallen rather than risen. We had introduced a plethora of individual items of change, from the first statutory minimum wage through to vastly expanded maternity and paternity leave through to gay rights and Sure Start for children. Inner cities in Birmingham, Bristol, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Nottingham and Sheffield were regenerated. There was a huge new constitutional settlement and reform. And while many disagreed with the decisions on Iraq and Afghanistan, in 2007 Britain counted in the world, had a strong alliance with America and was a key player in Europe. There was also Northern Ireland. Taking a step back and examining it, the decade had been reasonably successful.

As 1 May approached, we started, unbelievably, to get that message out, and by the time of the anniversary itself, we had narrowed the polls almost to evens. Given we were now absolutely midterm, and given the wretched ‘cash for honours’ inquiry, it was quite something.

I decided to go and campaign vigorously in Scotland. There was a feeling I shouldn’t, but I was equally clear I should go and put real credibility on the line. The Scottish local elections were also being held, all of which gave me an opportunity to get out there and remind people what I could do.

The Scottish Labour Party responded brilliantly, whatever they might have felt privately. Lesley Quinn, the organiser and General Secretary, was a real trouper, tirelessly flogging them all on. I did a mixture of visits, speeches and Q & A sessions, some planned – as with a well-prepared speech on devolution – and others more of the stump variety. The audiences had to be fairly carefully selected, however. By then it was clear that anyone who disrupted anything could wipe off any other news, and the media were in a state of constant vigilance to get such a moment of destruction. I also did some more light-hearted media, which involved fairly quick-fire repartee rather than gravitas; but it was all pretty good-natured.

I even got to visit the street in the Govan district of Glasgow where my dad used to live. It was odd to think of him in that poor part of the city all those years ago, collecting his lemonade bottles for cinema money, living in a corporation tenement, a wee Glasgow laddie whose son would one day become prime minister.

The election result came and we nearly won it, losing by only one seat. As the count drifted into recounts and the whole thing hung in the balance, I thought for a short while that Jack McConnell might pull it off. But no; by the narrowest of margins, the Scottish National Party and their leader Alex Salmond were in. Had we had greater belief in ourselves – the assumption being we couldn’t win – I think we might have done it.

I was concerned about my own position in respect of both the Scottish and the Welsh campaigns. I wanted to complete Northern Ireland and set out the forward policy agenda, but I knew some people, with understandable feeling, thought I was being selfish in staying on through these campaigns. With a new leader we could have done better, and in particular it is possible with Gordon we would have won in Scotland. Jack McConnell was loyal and decent enough to deny this to me, but I wasn’t sure he meant it. On the other hand, people knew change was happening, so it was hardly sensible to vote against someone who wasn’t going to be there in a few weeks anyway. It was very frustrating. I knew once Alex Salmond got his feet under the table he could play off against the Westminster government and embed himself. It would be far harder to remove him than to stop him in the first place.

The speeches were going well – not in the sense that they were getting big coverage, but they were well received by those who received them, as it were, and they did amount to a serious corpus of argument about what we had done and why in the ten years in power. Throughout those final months, I was still charging forward with decisions.